The Thief and Her Partner
by JustKeepOnTheGrass
Summary: "You don't do love, so you just fuck him instead, right, Lianna?" But Jyn just swallows the guilt, shoves it down, buries it as deep as she can. - What Jyn does while Cassian searches for 'Lianna Hallik'. [Part 2 in the 'you hold nothing but the sun' series.]


_**Author's Note:** This story is the second in a series called 'you hold nothing but the sun' in which __Jyn and Cassian do not cross paths while the Alliance searches for Lianna Hallik, but in many ways, it feels like they do. This is_ _a companion piece to "The Spy and The Informant" (Cassian's POV). You don't have to read that one to understand this one, but I encourage you to nonetheless! *wink wink*_

* * *

Jyn likes this place despite herself. She likes the packed atmosphere, the bodies crushed together around the bar, the loud voices raised in drunken revelries. It is easier for her to blend in when there is a crowd. She is a small woman, a tiny little thing, as Saw used to call her. She is good at being inconspicuous. And today, of all days, she does not want to draw any attention.

She scans the room before making her way to the bar. She has to dodge under a Wookie's elbow and squeeze pass a low ranking Imperial officer to get to the counter. It doesn't take long for the bartender to notice her.

"You're new," remarks the woman. She is tall, much taller than Jyn, with dark eyes and skin, her hair tumbling around her face in beautiful ringlets. "First time?"

"No," lies Jyn easily. Too easily.

"Fair enough." The woman shrugs as though she would rather not argue. "Whaddaya want?"

"Corellian gin."

"Neat?"

"Yes."

The woman pours Jyn a shot and she downs it in one.

"Another."

The woman's lips twitch - something close to a smile - but she pours another shot without making a remark.

This time, Jyn picks up the glass and swirls it around. Her eyes flitter quickly around the room before she drinks it.

"Looking for someone?" asks the woman.

"You ask a lot of questions," says Jyn, a hint of annoyance creeping into her voice. "Don't you just tend the bar?"

"Asking questions is tending the bar," the woman replies. She pours Jyn another drink. "Most of my customers like it when I talk to them."

"Well, I don't." Jyn downs her drink and smacks the glass back down on the counter. She pulls out some credits and toss those down as well. "Here. These should cover it."

To Jyn's surprise, the woman does not look offended. She picks up the credits and turns them over with interest.

"You're not from here, are you?"

Jyn smirks, looking the woman up and down. "And neither are you. Stop pretending otherwise."

Her gaze turns hard. "Leaving, are you?"

Jyn shrugs. "I'll come again. Don't you worry."

* * *

Jyn is true to her words and comes back the next day.

She spots them at the other side of the cantina. Davin is a male human around thirty years of age with a beard that falls almost to his large belly. He is growing bald, Jyn notices, and his small, beady eyes always twitch as though he is blinking away flies. Sitting with him is Motto, a Toydarian with wings that are burnt at the edges. He sits hunched over, smoking on a long pipe, and Davin keeps swatting away the smoke with a disgruntled expression on his face. The two are pouring over a piece of paper - an important looking one, full of lines and numbers that Jyn cannot decipher from afar. When she approaches them, she nods her head at it.

"Planning something grand?"

Motto spots her and growls. Davin, however, quickly snatches the paper off the table.

"Hallik," he mutters darkly. "What an unpleasant surprise."

Jyn feels a tiny sense of pride at his words. She pulls over a chair and sits down at their table.

"Hello, gentlemen. Business is booming, I see."

"What do you want?" snaps Motto.

"What I'm owned, Motto." She reaches over and plucks the pipe out of the Toydarian's mouth. "I got into that facility, stole those plans for you, and now I want the rest of my money."

"What do you mean, the rest of your money?" cries Davin. "We already paid you what the job's worth."

"You said there were going to be ten 'troopers."

"Yeah, so?"

"There were twenty."

Davin fidgets. "Well, you handled them just fine."

"Twenty, Davin. _Twenty."_ Jyn bangs a hand on the table and both Davin and Motto flinch. _Keep eye contact. Don't lose it._ "I wanted the full payment upfront, but you said you could only afford half and you'd pay me back when the job's done. I thought - fine, I'd be generous. Because I _liked_ you." The word drips with irony and Davin visibly gulps. "So here I am. Asking _nicely._ You like me asking nicely, don't you?"

Davin is doing a good job of not breaking eye contact with her, Jyn would give him that, but she sees the sweat forming on his temples.

"Hallik, I-I appreciate what you've done, but see-" He gestures lamely at Motto. A desperate plea for help. "We-we…we just don't have the money. Business is…you know how business can be."

"Oh, I know how business can be," says Jyn, voice laced with danger now. She leans back in her seat and drums her fingers on the table. "A pity. I thought we had an understanding."

"We do!" says Motto quickly. "Give us a couple more days."

"So you could escape?"

"No! So we could get the money together."

"A charming offer, but I'm afraid I'd have to decline." Jyn stands up and turns towards Davin. The smile she gives him is acid, dripping with venom. "Do you remember those new propellors you've hidden away in your docking bay? The ones you don't want anyone to know about? Not even Motto?"

"What-" the man splutters. He throws the Toydarian a wild, frightened look. "She doesn't know what she's talking about!"

"Oh, I do, unfortunately," she scoffs. "Those propellers you traded for when you were in the Outer Rim? Well, if you go looking for them now, they won't be there in your docking bay. Because, you see," she shrugs, smiling sweetly, " _I_ have them now. Hidden. Carefully, this time. Consider it the rest of my payment."

"You can't! You can't!" Davin's face is turning red with anger. The fear has now given way to panic. Extreme panic. "I'd report you! Thief!"

"Thief?" She rolls her eyes. "A bit rich coming from the likes of you. Who was it that-"

She sees it coming too late.

A fist. Not from Davin, but from Motto. The Toydarian lunges from his seat and delivers a punch to the side of her head. She manages to glimpse it in the corner of her eye and ducks, but not before it grazes her temple.

Jyn hits the floor and tastes blood on her tongue. _Damn it. I'm getting slow._

People are yelling and then someone is dragging her up by the hair. It is Davin; she sees his small eyes going wide with glee and she catches his reeking odour.

"You think you can rob me, Hallik?" he growls.

It is too easy now, Jyn thinks. Too easy. She grabs Davin by the wrist and yanks him down hard. He lets out a cry of pain and lets go of her hair. _Amateur._ A kick to the knee, another to the groin, a swift punch to the chin, and the man is down, crumbled in a pathetic heap at her feet. She spits down at him for good measure.

"Anyone else?"

She reels around to Motto. The Toydarian is fluttering in mid-air now, half-way between either fleeing or joining the fight. But before he can make a decision to do either, another voice roars out above the den.

"OUT! OUT!"

It is the woman from the bar - the server with the long, dark hair. She strides across the room with a blaster in her hand. She points it first at Motto and then at Jyn.

"The blaster might be set at stun, but I'm not afraid to use it." Her voice cracks like thunder. "I want no fighting in my cantina. Take your business outside where it belongs."

Jyn aims another kick at Davin (he whines desperately) before throwing a withering glance at Motto.

"No need." She grabs a glass of gin from a nearby table and downs it in a gulp before tossing it to the floor. "We're done here."

* * *

She arrives back late when all the lights are out. In the darkness, she hears him stir on the bed.

"Lianna?"

"Shh. Go back to sleep."

She pulls off her boots, her jacket and her trousers before groping her way through the darkness. Her hand finds the bed and she sits down on the edge of it.

"You're back," he says, stating the obvious.

"Go back to sleep," she repeats, but he winds an arm around her middle and plants a kiss on her neck.

"I'm glad you're back," he mutters. He sounds young (ridiculously so), but then again, everything about him is young. Jyn turns to face him. He is handsome, this boy she picked out from the crowd and befriended. He has sandy blond hair that sweeps into his eyes, a straight narrow nose, and a pair of luscious lips that Jyn adores more than she'd care to admit. The thought clenches at her heart and something like guilt bubbles up inside her.

Yes, the boy's attractive, but what she finds more attractive has been his rich family and his connections with the research facility Davin and Motto had employed her to rob.

"Everything good?" he asks again.

"Yes, Jes, everything's good." She offers him a smile to placate him. She even leans in to kiss him for good measure. "And our cargo?"

"Safe and tucked away at my uncle's like I told you it'd be. Stop asking." He cups her face, plays with her hair and then pulls her down into the bed with him. "Trust me. I know you keep asking because you don't trust me."

 _I don't trust you,_ she thinks. But instead, she tells him: "Of course I do. Don't be silly, Jes."

She trusts him to be loyal to her; that's not the problem. She knows the boy is head over heels and would do anything for her. But she doesn't trust him to get things _right._

"Tomorrow we'll go find a buyer, like we talked about," he whispers. "And then, we'll use the money to buy a ship so we can get the hell off this planet."

"Are you sure? Your family-"

"How many times do I have to tell you, Lianna? To hell with them. I love _you_ now." The word sends shivers down her spine, makes her feel all cold inside. "It's you and me from now on, you hear? We belong together. It's not a coincidence that we met. It was fate."

 _Or it was me noticing your uniform and your family name._

But she nods and winds her hand into his hair.

"I'm sorry, okay? Ignore me. You know how nervous I get. I don't want you to have second thoughts."

"Second thoughts?" he scoffs. "How could I? I would never have second thoughts when it comes to you."

She kisses him again because she feels it is the right moment to do so. He groans against her lips. Then his hand, soft and unused, wanders up her leg until it finds her centre. He rubs his thumb against the fabric of her underwear, making her grind her hip into his touch. She hates herself for it - hates her body for responding. But then his fingers slip inside and she moans. _Yes. Yes._

If she closes her eyes she can imagine that he is someone else - anyone else. She can ignore the sharp, stinging self-disgust that is gnawing at her insides, making her brain whirls until she sees white.

 _Damn it, Hallik, what are you doing? What are you doing?_

* * *

Jyn leaves when it is not yet early. She is good at being quiet when she wants to; she dresses in silence, shoves all her things into her pack and closes the door behind her with barely a sound.

He is still asleep in the bed. She turns around one last time to take him in - his boyish face, the small smile on his lips, the way his chest rises and falls as he breathes…

It is for the better. She doesn't do love. At least not with a seventeen-year-old boy she has recruited to help rob a place.

But as she walks away, it is not Lianna Hallik who is whispering in her ear. It is Jyn Erso - the lost, broken woman she thought did not exist anymore.

 _You don't do love, so you just fuck him instead, right, Lianna?_

She swallows the guilt, shoves it down, buries it as deep as she can. She is used to doing it now, like she is used to looking down when she sees Imperial flags fluttering high from rooftops.

* * *

It is not hard for her to find a buyer in the black market. The man's face lights up immediately when she switches on the holo and shows him Davin's propellers.

"How much?"

She tells him the price and they hackle over it for a few minutes. When it is finally decided (he is paying more than he wants to but more than she has expected him to), she punches down an address for him.

"You sure it's all going to be there?"

She thinks of Jes' uncle whom she has met only once. It _should_ be there. "Positive," she says.

"Okay. Cause if it's not there, I'm going to report you and hunt you down, you hear?" He makes her give her fingerprints and it is now too late for her to refuse. "No one swindles me, girl. If you're planning on doing it, it'll not just be bounty hunters after you. I'll set the whole Imperial force on your ass."

"There won't be a problem. I promise."

There is that word again. Promise. She's promised Davin and Motto that she would steal _for_ them, not _from_ them. She's promised Jes that they would run away together. She's promised her mother - her dead mother whom she remembers only in flashes - that she would trust the force. None of these promises were kept.

The Kyber crystal burns against her chest.

She keeps the credits the man has paid her in her boots.

* * *

She should get a ship.

The whole day, as she wanders from sector to sector, she thinks that she should get a ship. Buy it now when she still has the credits. Maybe not a ship, but a passage off this planet. Before something goes wrong, before Jes finds her, or she finds _him._

But somehow, she lingers. She thinks of going back for him, at least so she can keep one promise. That way, she can live with herself - maybe not better, but certainly more.

Still, she cannot make up her mind, and when it is dark, she finds herself back at the cantina - the cantina where she had had a drink and where she had beaten Davin to a pulp. She does not know why she is here, but she knows that she is getting cold and the sight of something familiar ( _anything_ familiar, really) comforts her.

The lights are off already, but that has never stopped her before. It takes her a couple of minutes to work the circuits and the door hisses open with no trouble at all. Inside, she sees overturned chairs and tables in the darkness. For the briefest of seconds, she thinks she hears someone crying, but the sound fades away as quickly as it came. She is alone. _Good._

She rummages through the bar and finds a bottle of Corellian gin. She settles with it underneath the counter, curled up like a cat against the cold. The drink warms her and sends tingles up and down her body. It calms her, tricks her into feeling better - about Jes, about herself, about everything.

Maybe she'll go back in the morning, she thinks. _Keep my promise. Do better. Be better._ But then she knows she won't. The realisation makes her drink more. And the Kyber crystal seems to hum against her grip.

 _I'm Lianna Hallik, not Jyn Erso. Lianna Hallik. Lianna Hallik._

The name rings inside her head - it buzzes and vibrates so loud that she has to drink more to dull the noise. And the more she drinks, the more the warmth spreads. It is nice here, she thinks. It reminds her a little bit of home - wherever home is. If she can close her eyes for a little while…

 _I'm Lianna Hallik, not Jyn Erso. Lianna Hallik. Lianna Hallik._

* * *

"Lianna Hallik."

Someone is calling from far away.

 _No, no, my name is Jyn. Jyn Erso._

"Lianna Hallik. Lianna Hallik."

 _No, no…_

Something snaps inside her and her eyes spring open. She has fallen asleep, she realises with panic. The bottle of gin she is clutching is empty now and a light (sunlight?) is slipping into the room. Someone is staring at her.

 _No, no…I've been sloppy._ She thinks of Saw and her heart clenches at how disappointed he would be in her.

"Lianna Hallik?"

That someone is calling her again. She lifts a hand to shield her eyes from the light. It is the woman from the bar - the tall, dark one who had aimed a blaster at her yesterday.

"How do you know my name?" she rasps.

The woman scoffs. Something painful and ironic is dancing in her gaze. She reaches over and takes away the empty bottle.

"I see you've found my stash."

"Sorry."

The woman rolls her eyes. "Don't apologise if you don't mean it, Lianna Hallik."

"How do you know my name?" she asks again.

"I'm Heera," the woman answers instead. She offers Jyn a hand. Reluctantly, she takes it and Heera hoists her up to her feet. "You're more trouble than you're worth. I can definitely see the interest."

"What interest?"

Jyn has no idea what Heera is talking about and Heera does not look like she wants to elaborate. She pours a glass of water and pushes it towards Jyn.

"Drink."

Jyn eyes her suspiciously, but takes the glass and sips.

"Why are you helping me?"

"I'm not helping you. I'm just sending you on your way." Heera cocks her head and looks Jyn up and down. The gaze makes Jyn burn with embarrassment and she quickly takes another sip of water. "And you should know, Lianna Hallik, that a friend of mine is looking for you."

Her hand that's holding the glass shakes.

 _Damn it. I'm getting sloppy. Slow._

 _Saw, what would you say if you could see me now?_

"A friend?" Jyn tries to keep her voice casual, but she knows that she is not fooling Heera.

"A friend," repeats Heera. "Sullen type. A fan of Corellian gin like you."

"Is he now?"

Heera frowns. "Did I say 'he'?"

"You didn't have to." Jyn shrugs. "It was obvious."

Heera stares at her with a look she can't quite read.

"Is he from the Empire?"

Heera shakes her head. "Alliance."

Jyn curses loudly, making Heera's eyebrows shoot up with interest.

"He's not wholly bad, you know," says the bartender. "Not much of a talker, but you can't have everything."

"I'm not staying to find out." She picks up her pack and slings it over her shoulder. "Thanks for the drink, for the place to crash and for the warning, but I'm out of here."

 _Straight to the docking bay. Get a ship. Or a passage. Maybe to somewhere cold._

"Is it just you then?" asks Heera.

She thinks fleetingly of Jes - his hair all ruffled, with a sweet, innocent grin on his lips - and she nods.

"Just me. You can tell your friend that if he comes looking again."

"Oh, he's gotten what he wanted. He's not coming back here," says Heera, smiling strangely. "Goodbye, Lianna Hallik."

 _Jyn Erso. My name is Jyn Erso._

But she says nothing, just lifts a hand in weak farewell. She feels Heera's gaze on her as she walks away, but she does not turn back and she does not waver.

 _Another promise broken. But hey. Who's counting?_

 _._

 _._

 _._

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** There it is! Now you know what Jyn has been up to while Cassian has been sleeping with Heera and searching for 'Lianna Hallik'. Jyn is not at all likeable in this one, but I hope she is broken and vulnerable enough that you'd root for her._

 _Here, we see that Jyn and Cassian just barely miss each other. In my head, he leaves Heera and walks pass Jyn, but doesn't see her curled up under the counter. They might just meet in the next story. No promises though!_

 _Let me know what you thought!_


End file.
